


Blood

by Mistress_of_Squirrels



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/M, Implied Torture, Mentions of Slavery, Nuka World, Nuka World Spoilers, Romance, Violence, raider, sexual innuendo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:53:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8026792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistress_of_Squirrels/pseuds/Mistress_of_Squirrels
Summary: Gage is wounded in an ambush by the remaining Operators. Cal does what she does best to make sure that doesn't happen again.





	Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a really cool prompt idea I found here:http://daily-prompts.tumblr.com/post/149024553242/prompt-651 , and a tarot prompt from baph0maidn on tumblr that really helped fill in the details. I didn’t really follow the rules for either prompt, but this fic wouldn’t exist without them. 
> 
> **Note: It's in the tags, but Cal is a raider. She has never been in a vault, and she has nothing to do with the sole survivor. She does raider stuff, and is generally an asshole. Please mind the tags, and if any of that offends you, maybe give this one a pass.

Blood. The filthy tanktop was covered in it. It stained Cal’s hands in dripping red, slicked her fingers and made her grip clumsy as she fumbled with a stimpack. It took two tries to get the proper angle and force, but she managed to jam the hypodermic into the meat of Gage’s shoulder. The needle released its contents with a hiss, and Cal clamped her hands back over the wound in his abdomen.

Gage let out a low groan, the lashes of his good eye fluttering closed, and Cal only pressed down harder with one hand, bringing the other up to grab his chin, forcing him to look at her.

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare!”

An underlying plea softened the bark of her command, and wasn’t that just embarrassing? She was the Overboss, damn it - but either her second got the message, or stims worked a helluva lot faster than she thought, because his gaze started to clear. His eye flicked from her face down to where her hand was pressed against his stomach, crimson streams still welling sluggishly from between her fingers.

“Ain’t doin’ so hot here, boss.”

“Just shut up,” Cal snapped, blowing a stray lock of bleached hair out of her eyes. “And give the stims a chance to work. It’s fine - _you’re_ fine.”

Gage grunted what would have been a laugh were the sound not so pained, and leaned his head back. Cal lifted her hand a fraction so she could take a cautious peek at the mess beneath and frowned. The bleeding had nearly stopped. She didn’t see an exit wound, and that complicated matters. Walking all the way back with a bullet still lodged in his gut was risky, but they were low on options. His only chance was Mackenzie, back in the Nuka Town market.

“C’mon,” she said, pulling Gage to his feet. Cal stepped in close to his side, slinging his arm around her shoulders and wrapping one of hers around his waist, encouraging the raider to lean against her.

“You’re fine,” she repeated, wondering who exactly she was trying to convince. Gage didn’t respond, and she cast another worried glance his way. Cal's skill lay in ending lives, not saving them, but he didn’t look good, even to her untrained eye. A fine sheen of sweat coated his brow, and beneath the blood and grime, his ruddy tan was ashen.

Slowly, they limped away from Dry Rock Gulch. Cal kicked the corpse of an Operator as they passed and spat at it in an impotent show of rage. She should have known better than to think the power plant was the end of those prissy shits, but she’d grown complacent, and they’d been ambushed. No way around it.

Gage oughta be chewing her out right about now, telling her this was the same kind of dumb shit Colter would have fallen for, but aside from the occasional sharp hitch of his breath, the raider was quiet the whole way back to Nuka Town. By the time Cal kicked open the market door, he was leaning heavily against her. His hand slipped from her shoulder to hang limp at his side, and she staggered as his full weight suddenly sagged against her.

“Get me Mackenzie!” she snarled at the nearest guard, struggling to hold Gage up as he slumped forward.

His wound was bleeding again, coating the thick straps of her harness and soaking into the flimsy strip of fabric beneath. Any benefit from the stimpack she’d administered was long since gone. He’d fallen unconscious too, and none of her poking or prodding would wake him.

Cal shifted, thrusting her hip out to balance Gage’s extra weight and snatched the wrist of a passing trader. “Get this place cleared. If they ain’t Pack or wearin’ a collar, I want ‘em out. And where the _fuck_ is that doctor?!”

The man moved to do as he was told, jerking his arm away and pausing long enough to glare back at her over his shoulder.

_Aaron_.

The name flashed through her mind as recognition dawned, and Cal’s lip curled in displeasure. Out of all the traders in the market, he alone still openly showed defiance. It seemed it would take more than a collar to correct that, and she was in just the right mood for a little attitude adjustment.

Mackenzie chose that moment to appear, led by one of the Pack, some idiot that had pissed Mason off enough to earn babysitting duty. “Here, boss.”

Cal and turned a hard look on the doctor. “Took your fuckin’  time, didn’t ya?”

Mackenzie wrung her hands, eyes darting to the ground as she said, “Sorry, boss. Didn’t know you were back.”

“Now ya do,” Cal muttered, waving the Pack member away. “Fix ‘im,” she demanded, jerking her chin down at Gage’s limp form. “No fuckin’ around, either.”

The doctor’s mouth pulled into a frown as she took in just how much blood spattered their clothes, but to her credit, she wasted no time in leading them to a makeshift cot. “I’ll...I’ll do my best, boss.”

Gentleness didn’t come naturally to her, but Cal laid Gage on the cot as though her burden were made of glass. She got him settled, resisting the urge to do something stupid like let her hands linger longer than was strictly necessary and narrowed her eyes at the doctor. “You just make sure your ‘best’ is enough.”

A derisive snort drew her attention, and she found Aaron watching her as he rubbed at the wrist she’d grabbed earlier. His expression was smug as he sneered, “Or what, _boss_? You gonna kill the only one that can put you raiders back together?”

In three quick strides, Cal closed the distance between them and backhanded the trader across his face. Putting up with backtalk from the other gangs had been bad enough. Now that she had their respect, she sure as _shit_ wasn’t going to tolerate it from the peons.

Blood dribbled down Aaron’s lip in a thin stream as he clapped a hand to his nose, features twisted in pain now instead of scorn.

Satisfied that she made her point, Cal turned back to the doctor. “He’s right, y’know - you ain’t so easy to replace.” She shot Mackenzie a nasty grin, lowering her voice to a menacing purr as she added, “But that don’t go for the rest of ‘em. You let ‘im die, and I’ll have three of yours to make up for it.”

Mackenzie gulped hard and nodded. “Understood, boss.”

Seeing a man’s insides had never bothered her before, but watching the doc dig around for the bullet in Gage was almost more than Cal could handle. Thanks to enough chems to knock out a brahmin, her second wasn’t feeling a thing. She couldn’t say the same for herself. It wasn’t long before the burn of bile flooded her throat, and she had to avert her eyes, swallowing thickly to avoid embarrassing herself even further.

Mackenzie paused to cast a worried glance in her direction, and after a moment to get herself under control Cal simply stared back, face wooden, until the doctor dropped her eyes and returned to her work.

She wasn’t going to let a little blood get to her, even if it was a helluva lot more than a little, now that she got another look. Cal had seen worse messes, after all. Shit, she’d made worse messes. So what if this time around, all that blood happened to belong to the only person she gave a damn about?

Cal lost track of how much time passed as she stood in the market, rigid and glowering. A few traders sent curious looks her way, but they had the sense to keep their distance. They might not have heard her exchange with Mackenzie, but they were easy targets for her mounting frustration, and they knew it.

Finally, the doctor stepped back and wiped her hands on a rag. Cal watched, impassive, arching a brow when Mackenzie met her eyes. Her posture was weary, but lacking the tension Cal would have expected from a woman who knew her friends were about to die. A good sign, but Cal still needed to hear her _say_ it.

Mackenzie bobbed a tired nod in response to the unspoken question. “He’ll be out for a while, with all that Med X in his system, but he’ll live.”

_He’ll live_.

Cal had a hard time placing the feeling that enveloped her. It was stumbling on a box of snack cakes after days of nothing, or the quiet moment where she could breathe again after completing her trials for the Forged. It wasn’t a feeling she’d ever associated with another person - that kind of shit made people weak, and any trace of softness should have been burned out of her a long time ago. Yet here she was, head light and legs like jelly, all over two little words. Fuckin’ pathetic, was what it was.

Only sheer force of will kept her spine straight as she jerked her head in a curt nod. “I’m sure your friends appreciate it. Keep me posted - if he so much as fuckin’ twitches in his sleep, I wanna hear about it. Clear?” Without waiting for Mackenzie to reply, Cal turned away, eyes sweeping over the other traders in the market. “The rest of you shits get back to work.”

Casting one final look in Gage’s direction, Cal turned on her heel and left the market, a troubled frown tugging at her lips. She might be Overboss, she might have the loyalty of the Disciples and the Pack, but she wasn’t dumb enough to think any of that was set in stone. Mason in particular had made it clear that he thought himself capable of leading; flat out said he’d turn on her if enough caps were involved.

There’d be gossip after this shit with the Operators - might even be those that thought they saw some kind of vulnerability in her attachment to her second. Not ideal, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied, she realized, looking up at the twisted faces of Mags and William as she passed the main gate to Nuka Town. The empty black holes where their eyes used to be seemed to follow her as she walked by, shrunken lips pulled back from dull teeth in a permanent leer. Cal flashed a grin of her own, her mood lifting. She hadn’t made it this far by not knowing how to spin a situation in her favor, and if anyone needed a reminder not to fuck with her, _well_. Poor Mags and William were looking awful lonely up there all by themselves.

 

* * *

 

 

Waking was slow, like that time he’d fallen off the dock when he was just a kid. Murky black, all around him, with only a faint patch of light to show him up from down. At first, he thought he might have died. Weren’t they always talking about some kind of light? He couldn’t recall anyone mentioning how bad it hurt though, like hot knives jammed beneath his eyelids, straight into his brain. His mouth tasted funny, too, sour and metallic, and dry as the fuckin’ wastes. Probably not dead then, but it was hard to feel grateful when his head was pounding and trying to move away from the damn light sent fire tearing through his insides.

Gage swallowed back a wave of nausea, only the thought of unleashing some new form of torment keeping him from puking on himself. A cool hand slid across his brow and then moved to prod at his stomach, causing him to suck in a breath and hiss it out between his teeth.

“Boss?” he managed to croak, knowing as soon as the word left his mouth that it wasn’t Cal touching him. It was too soft, too timid. The boss could do gentle, when she had a mind to. Hell there’d been a time or two she’d been downright tender, even. But she always ran her mouth after, talked some shit like she had something to make up for, and it was always just the two of them. There were too many other voices around for that to be the case now.

He cracked his eye open, blinking a few times to get rid of the blurriness. When his vision cleared, he saw the doctor from the market looking down at him, shaking her head.

“No. She stepped out, but she’ll want to know you’re awake.”

“She was here?”

“Pretty much all night and most of today,” Mackenzie confirmed. “She only left about half an hour ago.”

Gage frowned, not sure what to make of the news. Not only had he been down and out for what was approaching a solid twenty-four hours, but the boss had been there with him for most of it.

He vaguely remembered the long walk back from the Gulch, the flash of something like fear in Cal’s steel gray eyes as she urged him on. At the time, he’d thought it was all in his head, some combination of shock and pain and blood loss. And why not? He’d never seen the boss afraid before, and it wasn’t like she’d had a reason for it.The remaining gangs had fallen in line, loyal as they’d ever be, and it hadn’t taken more than a nudge to get her on board with his plan in the first place. She sure as hell didn’t need him anymore, if she ever had at all. He had a lot to think about, if nothing else, and he wasn’t going to get much of that done in here.

It was too loud, with too many people just waiting for the chance to slip a knife between his ribs and finish what the Operators started. Hell, Mackenzie had just saved his life, and even she couldn’t be trusted. He doubted the doctor had the nerve to try anything herself, but he didn’t think for a minute that she wouldn’t stand by and let someone else do it for her.

Gage took a deep breath and held it as he forced himself to sit up. Still felt like a yao guai was clawing at his guts, but knowing what to expect made it a little more tolerable.

Mackenzie’s eyes widened in alarm when she saw what he was about, patting the air with her hands in some futile gesture meant to keep him still. “I don’t think you should be up just yet. The boss -”

“I’ll find her,” Gage grunted, swinging a leg around to the side of the cot. “Ain’t nothin’ for you to worry about.”

The doc snorted at that, but aside from tying him down, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to stop him, and he had no intention of staying put.

“Fine,” she sighed, snatching a stimpack from the counter and shoving it at him. When he cocked a brow, she huffed an irritated sigh and shook her head. “I have a vested interest in your survival, nothing more. If you tear your stitches and bleed out, better men than you will pay for it.”

Gage shoved the hypodermic in a pocket and grinned in spite of himself. Seemed like the doc had a spine after all. “So the boss thinks I’m worth at least two of yours, eh? Good to know. Don’t worry, doc. I ain’t plannin’ on dyin’ anytime soon.”

It took all of five minutes before Gage started to think he might have been a bit hasty in his decision to leave, but he was halfway to Fizztop Mountain already, and he’d rather eat his bootlaces than turn around now. He trudged on, trying to block out anything beyond putting one foot in front of the other. It worked, to a point, until he saw Cal walking his way and just kind of... forgot about everything else.

Every bit as tall as he was and built like a Pre-War tank, the boss stood out in a crowd. She didn’t slouch or try to make herself look smaller like some women with height to them. No, Cal stood straight and proud and walked like everything she laid eyes on either belonged to her, or soon would. From what he’d seen so far, she wasn’t wrong.

The boss must’ve noticed him a few seconds later, ‘cause she made a direct line for him. As she got closer, he could see she was still covered in blood, and while Gage had no doubt a fair bit of that was _his_ , that didn’t explain the patches that still had a wet sheen to them. Looked like Cal’d been busy in the short time she was gone.

She gave him a wide grin, tongue curling behind the space where one of her front teeth was broken. ‘Cute’ wasn’t a word he’d normally use for someone that could snap him in half - not out loud, anyway - but there was something oddly endearing about the little gap in her smile, the slight lisp she tried so hard to hide.  

“‘Bout time you got your lazy ass outta bed,” Cal smirked, falling into step beside him. Lowering her voice so only he could hear, she added, “What _are_ ya doin’ up?”

“Someone’s gotta keep you from burnin’ the place down.”

She snorted at that, but didn’t respond. They walked in silence, slowly making their way toward the elevator at the base of the mountain. Cal stuck close, but not enough to seem like she was hovering. With her head down, tilted slightly toward him, and their easy pace, it just looked like they were deep in conversation - something everyone had seen before as they discussed the park or planned a job. It stung his pride a bit, but the act made him feel like there was less of a target on his back.

By the time they got to the bottom of Fizztop, it took everything Gage had to stay standing. Cal’s eyes flicked to the bandages around his abdomen, and widened.

“Idiot,” she hissed beneath her breath. He followed her gaze and looked down to see the strips of cloth spotted with red.

The boss slammed a fist on the button for the elevator, tension evident in the set of her shoulders. They rode up in silence, Gage leaning heavily on the rail. Once they were inside the Grille, Cal looped an arm carefully around his waist and steered him toward the double bed in the corner. Once he was seated, she started unwrapping the bandages, fingers pressing gingerly around the bullet wound.

“Stitches look good,” she said at last. “And the bleedin’ ain’t bad. If you’d fuckin’ sit still for five minutes, it might actually heal.”

“What’d you expect, boss? For me to sit and wait for some asshole with a grudge to make a move?”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” Cal said, shaking her head. “The gangs wanted blood and caps, and they’re swimmin’ in both. That’s because of you just as much as me. Shit, Gage, without you, I wouldn’t even be here.”

Technically true, but there was another side to that as well. Without her, he’d probably be Nisha’s plaything by now.

“Doesn’t mean there ain’t still hard feelings over all that shit with Colter.”

“They can have all the feelings they want,” Cal snorted. “So long as no one goes gettin’ any ideas.” The boss went quiet a few moments, teeth worrying her bottom lip as her brow furrowed in thought.

“I wanted to say, that thing with the Operators and  you gettin’ fucked up like this - that’s on me.”

Gage huffed a laugh, wrapping an arm around his middle to brace against the resulting flare of pain. “I didn’t think they’d be dumb enough to stay in Nuka World, either. They’ve got balls, I’ll give ‘em that.”

“More balls than brains,” Cal agreed. “At least they did. Who knows, now?” At his questioning look, she explained, “Sent a crew out to the Gulch and managed to round up a few stragglers. Nisha’s got ‘em now, but she was nice enough to share her toys for a bit.”

“Have fun?”

That kind of thing was messier than he cared for, but Cal had a vicious streak a mile wide. He’d known as soon as he’d seen her in the gauntlet that she’d fit right in with Nisha’s crew. Most wasters that made it that far tried to avoid the ‘audience participation’ stage. She’d reveled in it, and had taken down quite a few of theirs before deciding it was time to move on.

“Well, yeah, but it wasn’t about _fun_. People around here already know what happens if they cross me. I guess a reminder don’t hurt, but I needed to make a point: _Don’t fuck with what’s mine_.”

Gage assumed she meant Nuka World, but really, that didn’t make any sense. It took three gangs to take the park; a handful of Operators didn’t stand a chance. His confusion must have shown, because the boss let out a sigh.

“You, dumbass.”

And damn if that didn’t just throw him for a loop. There was...something between them, but hell if he knew what. He’d always figured it was trust,  respect, and a healthy dose of mutual attraction. But the way she’d said it; fierce, almost protective. The doc said she’d barely left his side….

“What is this, boss?” he asked cautiously.

“What do ya mean?”

He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, suddenly uncomfortable. He wasn’t good at this shit. Never had been, and up until now, that had suited him just fine. He’d never had a reason to be.

“This,” he stammered, and if that wasn’t a piss-poor attempt at explaining himself, he didn’t know what was. He took a deep breath and tried again. “You and me. What is it you’re wanting out of this, exactly?”

“Well, I’ve got you in my bed,” she said with a leer. “I’d say that’s a good start.”

Gage could have left it at that. It wasn’t a bad arrangement, by any means, and a helluva lot less awkward than pressing further. It made no sense then, when he opened up his mouth and blurted, “Is that all?”

Cal was quiet for a long time. So long, he was sure he’d fucked up a good thing and was wracking his brain for a way to fix it. She touched his arm - and while he’d never call her ‘soft’, it was another rare glimpse of something close -  and said quietly, “No, it’s more than that. I don’t know what, but we both know it is.”

“Seems so,” he said, and then sighed. “But look, boss, I ain’t gonna lie. I’ve never done this before. Hell, I ain’t even sure it would work.”

“Has so far,” she pointed out. “It don’t have to be weird unless we make it weird. Nothin’s really changed, Gage.”

It hadn’t, but it had. Even if they agreed to leave things as they were and never take that next step, _everything_ had changed. Didn’t mean it had to be bad, though. Cal was still the one who risked her ass to turn things around for them, still the only person he could trust, the only one he _cared_ about.

“Don’t expect me to go all sappy on you,” Gage said with a grin, feeling lighter than he had in long, long time.

Cal flashed a grin of her own, though it reached her eyes in a way none of the others ever had. “You do, and I’m leavin’ your ass here.”

She really was something, he decided.  Maybe they had a shot at whatever this was after all.


End file.
